The M6D, the favored sidearm for all personnel in the UNSC. Chambered in 50-caliber, armor-piercing, high-explosive rounds. Reliable, dependable, and all other sorts of -ables in the book, the weapon was a staple of the armory for very good reason. Over the years, attempts had been made to supplement-slash-replace the weapon with newer models, but none of them ever quite achieved the status of their bigger, more famous brother. Stories abounded of Marines running out of heavy weapon ammunition, rifle rounds, grenades, and more, all the way down, until all they had left was that ever-reliable pistol – and they still held the line with it.

In Cortana's scaled-up hands, though, it was more like a pocket pistol. Still, as far as weapons went, she had trouble thinking of one that would fare better.

Well, except for the BR55. The UNSC's main battle rifle had been somewhat of a late arrival, compared to other weapons, but it had earned its place on the shelves of armories across human space. Its range was excellent, and with the mode selector it had, it could serve either as a DMR, fire in bursts, or stand in for an automatic rifle. (There'd been talks about quite simply replacing the MA series with the BR, but as far as she knew, those never went through. Even Infinity had a stock of assault rifles aboard.) There were, quite frankly, no two weapons she would rather have. Well, except a MAC gun, but those were a bit hard to carry around.

As Cortana stood in the manufacturing room aboard BOOMER, looking over the weapons, Wrex looked around, warily glaring at the Geth platforms working on the other project – the self-replicating construction drones.

"Walking onto a geth ship in broad daylight," Wrex grumbled to himself. "Not your best idea, Wrex."

Cortana glanced in his direction, and took note of his weapon, before turning around properly. "I wish I would've known what kind of weapons you liked when I put the order in – I would've put the order in for a shotgun."

"Shotgun, eh?" Wrex repeated, before shaking his head. "I'm good. Ballistic weapons, seriously?"

"Aw, you say that like there's something wrong with conventional ballistics."

The Krogan thought it over. "A bullet's a damn bullet, the way I see it. But it's a lot to carry around in battle. Extra ammo, extra mags… and if you run out, your gun becomes a club. Not that I mind using a club." Wrex chuckled to himself, and that was such a John way of thinking, Cortana couldn't help but smile… and feel a pang of sadness.

Too many times, had she seen him run out, and just start beating the Covenant to death.

Now that Cortana was going independent, though, and had access to all this new technology, she could carve out a space for herself. Away from the Geth, once they got the Council to calm down. She'd wait, though, until she had a respectable force in her employ.

"Where'd you pick up this stuff?" Wrex wondered. "It looks almost… human."

Cortana briefly wondered if she should share with the merc. Not the whole story of course, that would make her sound nuts, but a version of it.

"They're plans I drew up myself," Cortana answered. "They should very good at piercing armor. I don't know about kinetic barriers."

"Hmm… can I?" Wrex held out his hand, and she offered him the pistol. He moved it around in his hand, experimentally. "I like it. It's got weight. Well, since you did this, the only thing to do is to test 'em."

"Ooh, I like the way you think." Cortana took one last digital glance at the instance she left behind in the ship's systems, unsure if she should send everybody off just yet.

But, fuck it. Cortana was on the Citadel now, already in a few systems, and she really didn't care about making noise unless it would make her job more difficult. So, she'd come up with something. She could hack a bank and buy a ship. Or hack a ship, and just steal it.

She didn't need to get involved with the hunt for Saren – she calculated it to be the best decision at the time, but now, since the threat of an actual war was off the table, the calculations had changed. She still wanted to destroy the Heretics, though.

They'd made a mistake, messing with her people.

So, Cortana doubled-down on her earlier orders, electing to keep Legion by her side, and Wrex now.

Cortana slipped on a few fabricated ammo belts, and magnetization mounts for her weapons. Her pistol went to one she mounted to her thigh, and the battle rifle went nicely on to her back, alongside a geth plasma shotgun.

"Let's move."

One thing became quickly apparent: Cortana didn't know how to shoot to save her fucking life. The theory was easy to read up on, with gun safety pretty much being universal. Aim only at what you mean to shoot, squeeze the trigger, not jerk it, and try to reload between pauses, not when you're so low you run out at a critical time.

Unfortunately, Cortana's systems were not quite operating nominally with the weapons. The battle rifle felt like a nerf gun in her hands, with its size having been made for regular humans. Upsizing it would've meant upsizing the ammunition, and all the extra work that came with that. Leaving the barrel the same size, but upsizing the rest of the gun, would've messed with the mechanisms inside responsible for much of its operation. Plus, her platform's integrated combat systems were calibrated for use with local weapons.

Something about her guns – the comparative recoil, the unfamiliarity of the onboard electronics, and the fact that they were new guns that hadn't been properly sighted before being pressed in the field – were making them behave very naughty. The electronics issue was easily fixed by writing a patch on the fly, and the recoil could easily be taken into account after firing the weapons once, but the sighting issue was…

Yeah, she should've been more specific when she made the order.

A round from the battle rifle slammed into one of the conjoined orb-shaped chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, as more went flying out of the barrel, and off their targets by a measure of several inches.

Wrex could only laugh as the glass fell. "Good job! I always hated that thing! Looked too much like a man's quad!"

"Alert: Property damage increasing," Legion informed. It was much more on-target with its shots, courtesy of its plasma gun. "Citadel Security forces will add these to the list of charges."

"C-Sec's not coming. 'Officer Halsey' told dispatch that the sound of firearms were just fireworks set off by a bunch of rowdy kids."

Cortana put the gun on her back, and drew the pistol. The computers in the gun connected with the circuits in her hands, showing the ammo count. Mimicking the stance John always had when he held the weapon, she lifted it, and looked through the smart-scope mounted at the end.

The zoom was quick to activate. Cortana lined up a shot at the nearest combatant's torso, and fired.

The Krogan guard, wearing armor made of ceramic which was designed to stop projectiles the size of a grain of sand, and not .50-cal armor-penetrating, explosive ammo, stumbled backward as the round buried itself into his chest. Another pistol round to the head, and the Krogan went berserk, charging.

A burst of shots from Legion melted away the Krogan's head, and the body dropped, going limp.

Wrex popped up, charging for the door. "Fist is through here." Wrex slammed his hand against the control.

"Yeah, you've got point, big guy," Cortana replied.

Wrex glanced at her, and snorted. "Bigger than I am…" He walked through the door, into a warehouse in the back, causing two human men to pop up with twin pistols.

"Stop right there!" One of the men hollered. "Or we'll shoot."

"Shoot?" Wrex derisively repeated. "You're warehouse workers. The only people you've shot are ones who weren't armed to the teeth." He looked over to Cortana, who was still trying to squeeze through the door. "Could you move your big blue ass? We don't have all day."

"It's not my fault! For being a station meant for all cultures, these doors are fucking small."

"S-Stay back!" The other one waved his gun for emphasis. The two were very clearly scared, not actual guards by the look of it. Hmm… non-combatants were a bit different. Everybody else had just started going all Baghdad and shit when they walked in, but those two at least tried not to shoot first.

Plus, the mission objectives weren't to kill anything that moved. Just Fist, and what tried to kill them. But, at the same time, they were a potential threat.

What if they got away, and alerted the station to the fact that she and Legion had killed people. Digital alteration of the surveillance footage would cover their tracks – not actual people.

Then again… the people here were big on evidence, not words. She could handle things, if the consequences caught up to her. So, she'd try to talk them down.

"Easy," Cortana held up her hands, the pistol in one of them. Well, she tried to – she got a bit close to the ceiling.

"D-Drop your gun!"

"Sure," Cortana shrugged. "But… well, can I tell you about it first? I'm a bit proud of it."

"What the hell are you doing?" Wrex growled at her.

"This," Cortana wiggled the gun. "Is a ballistic firearm. If you take a hit from this, there's no grain-of-sand-sized speck of iron that your body can just harmlessly incorporate as long as it doesn't hit anything vital. If you take a hit from this, chances are, you're gonna bleed out, get all sorts of nasty wounds, maybe even pain for the rest of your life. So," As rapidly as her body would allow, Cortana snapped the gun in their direction, and racked the slide. "Wanna chance it?"

The two men looked at each other, and lowered their guns. "Screw this. Fist doesn't pay us to deal with this shit." The two walked past, ducking out of sight, until they were out of the club.

Wrex looked over to Cortana, growling his disapproval. "Would've been faster to just kill them."

"Yes," Cortana agreed. "But I didn't want to."

Wrex shook his head, and moved to follow her to the door, into Fist's office.

The man himself was standing behind his desk, wielding a shotgun as two turrets rose out of alcoves in the floor. Cortana snapped to look at them the moment she registered the motion, going for her battle rifle. Bursts of fire at each one ripped through them, piercing the sheet metal they had in the way of armor, and shattering them.

"Wrex, you son of a bitch! I should've known you-" Fist began, before two shots from Wrex's shotgun took down his kinetic barrier. "Agh!"

"Barriers are made to give you time to find cover, not to talk, moron," Wrex vented the heat from the weapon, walking up to Fist and placing his foot on the man's torso.

Fist struggled, going for his gun, only to get Wrex's shotgun shoved in his face.

"My acquaintance here needs something you have," Wrex growled, as Cortana walked over.

"Acquaintan…" Fist looked up, his eyes widening at the AI, and the geth beside her. "What the- Don't just stand there, kill him!"

Cortana's face twisted, as Wrex stomped on Fist's stomach.

"Not all the Geth work for Saren, numbnuts." Cortana crossed her arms. "I want that data you have on Saren."

"Wh- why!?" Fist demanded.

"Got myself involved with the Geth," Cortana answered. "They help me on my feet, and in return, I help them improve relations with organics. Saren's geth have made that very difficult, so I need them out of the picture. So," Cortana drew her pistol. "The data."

"I don't have the data, that's the truth!" Fist raised his arms desperately.

"Bullshit." Wrex called. "Why else would you jump ship?"

"W-Well, I…" Fist cleared his throat. "I may have, erm, heard of a little birdie who had information about Saren… I was going to take that data, and hold onto it. F-For safekeeping, of course."

Cortana crossed her arms. "You mean blackmail."

"I mean, who wouldn't like to have a Spectre on their payroll?" Fist rhetorically asked. "Especially one with a Geth armada?

"Worse than going to work for Saren – you thought you could strike out on your own," Wrex shook his head. "Idiot."

"It was a smart plan!"

"Well, I can't say you did yourself any favors by letting people think you were working for Saren," Cortana commented. "And not waiting until you actually had the information you needed wasn't the best idea. And the less said about trying to blackmail one of the most powerful people in the galaxy, who could make you disappear and be on the totally right side of the law for it, the better. But, that's not important," Cortana shot the ground near Fist. She'd been aiming for his foot… but, well, the sighting issues. "The data. Who has it?"

"Some Quarian, I don't know!" Fist breathed quickly. "She wanted to sell it to the Shadow Broker directly – told me she wouldn't play ball unless it was him, so I set up a meeting."

Wrex shook his head. "You are so full of varren shit. Nobody meets the Broker. Even I was hired through an intermediary."

"She doesn't know that," Fist smugly huffed. "Those Quarians, they grow up on those ships, trusting everybody around them to have their back. They're too damn easy to fool. When she gets to the meeting point, it'll be my boys waiting for her."

Cortana frowned, and bent down, grabbing Fist by the face. "Where is she?"

Fist, attempting to kick and punch away, finally responded with a voice muffled by her immense hand. "The alleyway, just outside! They're supposed to be meeting right about now, you can make it, if you hurry!"

Cortana let go, and offered the man a polite smile. "Thank you." She allowed the expression to stay on her face, as some measure of compensation to the man, before a shotgun blast turned the man's head into bloody pulp a moment later.

She wiped away a blood splatter on her face, and flicked it off her fingers.

"I should probably stay back, next time. Come on," Cortana gestured. "Let's go save that Quarian."

"Wait," Wrex shook his head. "They don't exactly have a high opinion of your kind."

Cortana could only roll her eyes. "It doesn't mean I want her dead. Come on." "Legion, how about it? Wanna save one of your creators?"

"We… would very much like that."

Three minutes, twenty seconds. That was all the time it took.

While they were talking with Fist, more of his goons, called back from their other jobs on the station, no doubt, had come in behind to fill the place. Before Cortana and Wrex could think about going anywhere, they had to clear those men out first.

Three minutes, and twenty seconds. That was how much time they wasted, on account of being slowed down.

They had made it to the alleyway, and up the stairs… before a gunshot rang out. When they reached the apex, they were just in time to see a helmeted form collapse to the ground.

To the Quarian's credit, she had at least put up a fight.

The scene they arrived at had two bodies – salarians in sealed suits, flung at the far end of the alley from a grenade blast. Bullet holes marked the walls like pepper, and a Turian was slumped down, with the smoking pistol held in his hand.

"Blast it!" Cortana spun to look at the intended target, running over to the Quarian. That shot had hit her, right in the heart – shredding through the suit, and the precious organ. Cortana rolled her over, allowing the purple visor to face up. "Hey, look at me! If you can hear me, I-"

The Quarian's eyes, barely visible, focused on something behind Cortana, and she began to struggle, moving for a gun. Her hand barely grazed the metal of Cortana's pistol, before her arm limply fell.

"Miss? Miss, can you hear me?" Cortana asked, unsure of what to do. Chest compressions wouldn't help if the heart was gone.

With the Quarian limp on the ground, Cortana followed the alien woman's gaze, finding Legion standing there. The illuminated optic was focused on the Quarian, almost reverently… though the panels on the side of its head drooped.

"We can get her to a hospital!" Cortana declared, picking up the body. "They might be able to grow her another heart, or-"

"Cortana," Legion addressed, causing Wrex to jump in surprise as it vocalized aloud. "That course of action would be… counter-productive."

The Krogan looked unsettled, but nodded. "It's right. Closest thing is Dr. Michel's clinic. And while she can patch bullet wounds and give flu shots, she's no heart surgeon. Sorry."

Cortana looked down at the visored face. It was her fault – if she'd been just a little bit faster, more responsive-

A flash of horrible screaming filled her mind, coupled with latent images of people – humans – being ripped apart down to their most basic level, until not even that remained.

"Irreversible damage due to oxygen deprivation will have occurred in three minutes. The nearest hospital facility equipped to treat wounds of this nature and the creators' species is ten minutes by car." Legion solemnly informed. "If life functions could be restored, it would be for naught."

Cortana looked down at the body. Quiet, thoughtful, Cortana touched her hand to the omni-tool, and pulled everything off it.

The device's systems screamed out in protest, attempting to run a digital shredder program, but Cortana was able to halt its processes in their tracks. The device was optimized and equipped to resist geth programs, not her.

In about a nanosecond, Cortana knew everything.

"Her name is Tali'Zorah," Cortana spoke aloud, as she ran the name through C-Sec's customs database, and came up with the file. Her business on the station was labeled as 'pilgrimage,' and she named no associates on the station.

No one to claim her body, or to send it home.

"From what little journal entries she kept, it looks like she found an intact geth memory core," Cortana hummed, frowning. "She came here running scared from Saren."

"And ran right into Fist," Wrex shook his head. "Damn shame. Quarians are good people – helpful. But pissy if you don't treat robots like the devil." He looked carefully at the corpse being carried. "If she knew what you were, when we showed up to save her, she probably would've let herself die outta spite."

"Maybe," Cortana sighed. "Well… we have the data, at least. We should get it back to the humans."

"What about the body?" Wrex wondered, looking at it. "We can't go around the station lugging a corpse."

"I'm sure the Citadel has protocols for tourists that die while they're here," Cortana replied. In fact, no sooner did those words leave her mouth, did she have said procedures pulled up for her examination. Standard C-Sec procedure was, if the person had an ID, to ship the body back to the person's planet-of-origin, and let them deal with it. In all other instances, the body was sent back to the appropriate agencies on the species homeworld, for the government there to deal with.

It was a policy that led to a lot of misplaced cadavers, and one that looked like it had gotten C-Sec in trouble for a time or two. But there was no better way of handling things, it appeared.

"Cortana, we would like to make a request."

"A request? Okay, shoot."

"We… would like to return Creator-Tali'Zorah's body to the Migrant Fleet. Due to their responsibility in creating us, the creators are not looked upon kindly by other organic races. Severe damage to the body, or intentful misplacement of it, are likely."

"Yeah…" Cortana could see it now – some lazy, C-Sec officer not really caring just because the body was a Quarian, and tossing it aboard the first ship out of there to be done with it.

Plus, it looked like Legion was learning. Something like this might generate some good will from the Quarians. Maybe not a lot. But some.

Of course, getting a ship would be easy. All Cortana needed to do was order one of the smallest ones to stay behind when BOOMER and the fleet departed.

The more difficult bit of resource acquisition would be something to preserve the body.

Hacking into galactic banks was just as therapeutic as hacking into UEG banks back home. Cortana was really starting to understand why the people here had such a fear of AI. Most of them were simple neural networks that could only pose a threat if enough programs were together – easy-ish enough to code VI to repel – but something like her, running around in a society that was so digitally interconnected…

Well, she was already seeing the results. Nobody could stop her.

Siphoning away money, and using it to purchase a cryogenic suspension unit, was easy enough. They weren't quite as commonplace as they were in the UNSC, but they were still useful for transporting troublesome wildlife across the galaxy in a humane manner.

The hardest part was to get it delivered by cargo drone, then erase that drone's memory of the delivery so that it didn't flag C-Sec upon seeing all the bodies.

In any case, the lid on the container was sealed, and they were able to wheel the unit out on some hand trucks stolen from the warehouse room in Chora's Den.

With Tali'Zorah's body on ice, Cortana led the way out of the alley, looking around suspiciously at all the people just walking around, like nothing had happened.

"They're just going about their days… after hearing a firefight." Cortana had never seen such desensitized people before. Well, except fighting the Covenant. She looked over to Wrex. "Are we in the ghetto part of the station?"

"Yup," Wrex simply nodded.

Cortana looked ahead, blinking. "Huh." The people were now starting to look at her. So, gunshots and explosions didn't grab their attention, but a twelve-foot-tall blue lady, a Krogan, and a geth pushing a suspicious crate did?

Fair enough.

Cortana stopped in front of the elevator back up to the Presidium, and turned to face Wrex. "Well… I suppose this is where we go our separate ways."

Wrex didn't make eye contact, strutting past her, into the elevator. "Nah, I think I'll stick by you for a while."

Cortana double-took in disbelief. "Huh?"

"Had fun shootin' up Chora's Den with you – does there need to be a reason past that?" Wrex answered, but the flicker of evasiveness in his eyes was too great to ignore.

Electing to question him about it later, Cortana stepped into the elevator behind him.

"Eden Prime was a major victory! The Beacon has brought us one step closer to finding the Conduit."

"And one step closer to the return of the Reapers."

Cortana ceased the playback. "And there you have it."

After returning from Chora's Den, Cortana wasn't surprised to find the others already in Udina's office. Including officer Vakarian.

As the playback ceased, Wrex huffed. "Who do these people think they are, supervillains?"

"It doesn't matter – that was definitely Saren's voice on the recording!" Vakarian answered. "This proves he was at the attack!"

"That's an incredible find," Shepard commented, turning to Cortana. "Where did you get it?"

"There was a Quarian who had it, who was going to sell it to the Shadow Broker to get Saren off her back," Cortana shrugged. "It was a trap. She was dead when we arrived, but, we got the data."

"Quarian?" Garrus repeated, slowly shaking his head. "Doctor Michel had sent a wounded Quarian Fist's way, but…"

"Damn it," Shepard sighed, rubbing her face. "Without the person who got the data, verifying it could be… tricky."

"Tricky, but not impossible," Udina responded. "I'll get an independent team of analysts on this. That way the Council can't claim 'AI-assisted trickery.'"

"But that will take forever!" Williams raised her voice, looking to Anderson for assistance.

He only sighed. "The Ambassador's right. We need our evidence to be airtight."

"I'll need to call in some favors," Udina began to tap at his terminal. "The more groups we have working on this, the better. A spreadsheet of people all agreeing it's legitimate will make it harder for the Council's analysts to say otherwise. This is a tremendous boon to our efforts – thank you. Now, I can only hope we might be able to salvage Shepard's spectre candidacy…"

"Shove your spectre offer, Udina, I'm not interested," Shepard shook her head insistently.

Udina scowled. "It's not about what you want, Commander, it's about the good of human-"

"If taking care of what's important falls by the wayside because of that damn spectreship, I'm not interested." Shepard stood her ground, and crossed her arms.

"It's a moot point anyway," Anderson cleared his throat. "First, we have to focus on Saren."

"Of course," Udina sighed. "I'll send the copies of this file off, and then message the Council. Hopefully, they play ball. And hopefully they don't cast doubt on an AI being in the Council Chambers once again."

"Actually, about that," Cortana cleared her throat. "We were just talking about leaving."

"What?" Shepard spun around to face her quickly. "What about what you said, about making a good impression on organics?"

Cortana shook her head. "I still want to do that, but not via politicking. I'm going to fight the Heretics, whether your Council clears a pursuit of Saren or not. And me, well, I'd like to get started sooner, rather than later. Come on, you two." Cortana gestured to Wrex and Legion, and stepped out of Udina's office.

…but, not before making good on her idea to replace Avina with another instance of herself, and leaving behind a contact frequency for the humans, just in case.

What? Cortana liked Shepard.

The ship chosen to be left behind for them was little more than a small yacht, not really intended for occupation by organic lifeforms it took a bit of work from the skeleton crew of Geth platforms to build facilities capable of housing Wrex.

Cortana had, in addition, found something else interesting inside the ship. Another platform, much more in-line with normal human proportions, clocking in at eight feet, instead of the twelve. It had, apparently, also been corrected of the issues induced by their hasty work, in the areas of the skin and facial features. The Geth aboard BOOMER had been keeping themselves occupied while Cortana was down on the Citadel, playing at being a detective.

Cortana liked her tall body, if only because she could appreciate the irony in having gone from 'small' to 'fuck-off huge' but she could admittedly see the utility in a smaller platform. In case it was needed, it would be welcome.

And so, with a Krogan in her employ, and a new platform, Cortana set out, away from the Citadel.